The Toshiba Satellite P505-S8010 is a powerful, big-screen media center, but the user experience needs a lot of work.

The Toshiba Satellite P505-S8010 ($950 street) joins an exclusive group of laptops that have colossal 18.4-inch widescreensthe largest ones on the market. It's also referred to as a media center, which is basically a gigantic laptop that caters to home theater enthusiasts and videophiles. While the processor and graphics duo put on a good performance show, this Satellite configuration failed to deliver a full HD and user experience worthy of the "media center" name.

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Design
The P505-S8010 is the kind of laptop that needs extra space on a desk. Its massive dimensions (17.4 by 11.7 by 1.7 inches, HWD) make thick plastics a natural choice for design materials. The glossy top is similar to that of the Acer Aspire AS8940-6865 ($1,399.00 Street, ), except the imprints are embedded underneath it. Toshiba's "Fusion" design is very similar to HP's signature imprints, like those found in the Pavilion dv7-3180us ($1,449.98 List, ), but not as sexy as metals, like those found in the Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch (Unibody) ($2,799.00 Direct, ). At 9.2 pounds, the P505-S8010 is a very heavy machine, one that will probably remain mostly tethered to a wall outlet. Laptops like the Gateway NV7915u ($600.00 Street, ) (6.7lbs) and the Dell Inspiron 1764-5955IBU ($799.99 List, ) (6.2lbs) are more appropriate for light travel and can pass for media centers as well.

The 18.4-inch widescreen is the P505-S8010's main attraction, as it's currently the biggest in the laptop industry. HP and Dell sold laptops with 19- and 20-inch screens a while back, but couldn't find a way to monetize on this niche. While the 1,600 by 945 resolution is good enough for a 720p HD experience, the Acer AS8940 took it a step further by shipping with a full HD screen (1,920 by 1,080).

Features
A good user experience is the hallmark of making a good laptop, and although Toshiba made room for a full size keyboard, adjacent numeric keypad, and feather touch media keys, the media keys were too sensitive and made these annoying beeping sounds. The feather touch keys are right next to the keyboard, so as I'm typing, the palm of my left hand would inadvertently graze these keys and set off a series of beeping sounds. Adding insult to injury is the gesture-based touchpad. While I liked that the touchpad was wide, it also meant that several fingers (index, middle, and ring) at a time would make contact with the touchpad, triggering multitouch gestures like scrolling and pinching. It got so annoying, in fact, that I had to turn these multitouch features off in Synaptic's software before I would surf the Web again.

The feature set is not going to blow you away. Smaller laptops like the Gateway NV7915u and Acer Aspire AS7740-5691 ($649.98 List, ) have the same basic features, including 4 USB ports, HDMI, VGA, a media card reader, and a Webcam. Granted, the P505-S8010 has a FireWire port, for those who still own legacy camcorders and storage devices, and the 500GB hard drive is commendable. What it truly needs, considering it comes with a huge screen, is a Blu-ray drive. If the Samsung R580 ($830 List, ) can include one for $830, the P505-S8010 should be able to do the same at $950. Like all of these laptops mentioned in this review, the P505-S8010 comes with a 1 year parts and labor warranty.

Performance
The Intel Core i3-330M (2.13GHz) and 4GB RAM combination is used in $650-$700 systems like the Gateway NV7915u and Acer AS7740-5691. Media centers like the Acer AS8940-6865 and HP 3180us ship with quad core Intel Core i7 processors, but are also much more expensive. The P505-S8010 performed well in video encoding (57 seconds) and Cinebench R10 (6,616) tests. It trailed the NV7915u in PCMark Vantage tests, though, despite having the same parts. Against the quad-core offerings of the HP dv7-3080us, the P505-S8010 was simply outmatched.

The P505-S8010 does have one sizable performance advantage: While the Gateway NV7915u, Dell Inspiron 1764, and Acer AS7740-5691 ship with Intel's integrated graphics, the P505-S8010 uses a discrete chip from Nvidia. The GeForce 310M is a midrange gaming card, racking up excellent frame rates in Crysis (20.2 frames per second) and World in Conflict (21 fps) benchmark tests.

The battery, however, is the smallest in this group and the fast, power-hungry components don't help. As a result, MobileMark 2007a battery testyielded 2 hours flat. Luckily, this laptop won't stray too far from an outlet.

The Toshiba Satellite P505-S8010 is reasonably priced and held its own in performance tests, thanks to a good processor and graphics card. However, it missed an opportunity to complement a huge 18.4-inch screen with a Blu-ray drive and full HD resolution. And rather than enhance the user experience, the touch sensitive media buttons and gesture touchpad did quite the opposite. You're better off spending more money on the Editors' Choice Acer Aspire AS8940-6865 or go with a bargain, like the Gateway NV7915u.

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About the Author

Cisco Cheng is the Lead Analyst of the laptop team at PCMag.com. He’s a one-man wrecking crew who tests and writes about anything considered a laptop (yes, even netbooks). He’s been with PC Mag for over 10 years and gets occasional headaches from all the technical knowledge he has absorbed during that time. He’d still be snowboarding and playing ba... See Full Bio

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Toshiba Satellite P505-S8010

Toshiba Satellite P505-S8010

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